The popularity of electronic imaging has been on the rise as imaging systems such as digital cameras provide consumers with the ability to capture digital images and display the images using personal computers. Electronic imaging allows for the electrical correction of imperfections in a captured image. These imperfections may result from manufacturing process variations and thermal processes and defects within the structures that comprise sensors included in imaging systems.
It is well known in the art that noise, or radiation, from dark current, or thermally-generated current, degrades captured images, resulting in speckles or a grainy appearance in uncorrected captured images. In order to electronically correct for dark current, a calibration procedure known as dark frame subtraction is typically used. In dark frame subtraction for digital cameras the dark current noise is represented by a dark frame that is captured separately from an image frame. The image frame depicts the desired picture. The dark frame is captured under identical conditions as the image frame, but with the mechanical shutter of the camera closed to prevent incident light on the image sensors of the camera. Therefore, the dark frame captures the imperfections caused by dark current noise originating from within the camera. The dark frame is subtracted from the image frame to obtain a corrected image. Dark frame subtraction cancels the dark offset noise in the image frame and improves the quality of the image frame.
In conventional dark frame subtraction, the image frame and dark frame are stored in separate random access memory (RAM) buffers. The image frame is captured and stored in one memory buffer. Following capture of the image frame, the dark frame is captured under similar conditions and stored in a second memory buffer. The image frame and the dark frame are equivalent in memory size and, therefore, require memory buffers of approximately the same size. A processor in the camera subtracts the dark frame from the image frame and the result is stored in the first memory buffer. Therefore, two full size memory buffers are required to perform conventional dark frame subtraction.